In philosophy naïve realism is used to describe the belief that physical objects continue to exist when they are no longer perceived. It can be contrasted with solipsism. Philosophy (from a combination of the Greek words philos meaning love and sophia meaning wisdom), as a practice, aims at some kind of understanding, knowledge, or wisdom about fundamental matters such as reality, knowledge, meaning, value, being, and truth. ... Solipsism (from the Latin ipse = self and solus = alone) is the metaphysical belief that only oneself exists, and that existence just means being a part of ones own mental states — all objects, people, etc, that one experiences are merely parts of ones own mind. ...

In the philosophy of perception naïve realism is the most straight-forward theory of perception. It is a theory that proposes that things are perceived directly. Naive Realism is believed by children before they discover that what they are actually seeing is based on two, disparate images in their eyes which are translated into electrical impulses in their brain where a single percept is resolved. A more sophisticated version of naive realism, known as Direct Realism, proposes that we perceive things directly using some unspecified direct connection through a chain of cause and effect. The philosophy of perception concerns how mental processes and symbols depend on the world internal and external to the perceiver. ... Direct realism is a theory of perception that claims that the senses provide us with direct awareness of the external world. ...

See also instrumentalism - confirmation holism - scientific materialism - critical realism - scientific realism In the philosophy of science, instrumentalism is the view that concepts and theories are merely useful instruments whose worth is measured not by whether the concepts and theories are true or false (or correctly depict reality), but how effective they are in explaining and predicting phenomena. ... Confirmational holism is the claim that scientific theories are confirmed or disconfirmed as a whole. ... This article primarily focuses on the general concepts of matter and existence. ... In the philosophy of perception, Critical realism is the theory that some of our sense-data (for example, those of primary qualities) can and do accurately represent external objects, properties, and events, while other of our sense-data (for example, those of secondary qualities and perceptual illusions) do not accurately... Scientific realism makes philosophical observations about the nature of scientific endeavor. ...